Leading Melbourne Restaurateur And Businessman Chris Lucas Calls For Major Hospitality Reforms

On the Hot Breakfast

Image: Triple M/Getty

Leading Melbourne restaurateur and businessman Chris Lucas has called for a summit to enact major reform in the hospitality sector after the collapse of George Calombaris’s restaurant empire.

Lucas owns venue like Chin Chin, Hawker Hall, Kong, Kisume, and others, and called on the prime minister to convene a forum to help sort out the issues facing the hospitality sector.

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“We had the model right here 30 years ago when Bob Hawke sat down, dragged everyone into Canberra and said ‘enough of this combative, fractured, confrontational way,” Lucas said on the Hot Breakfast.

“Because at the end of the day, if you don’t get a wages accord, and if the wages accord doesn’t balance with the needs of business, then guess what: we’re all in big trouble.

“And this is what I think: if Scott Morrison’s listening, if Josh Frydenberg is listening, pull everyone together.

“Let’s cut the crap, let’s get the politics out of it, let’s get all the interested bodies, the unions, both sides of politics, and business, and other community leaders, because it affects social enterprise, it affects people who are trying to help the lower end of our community because they’re the ones that are going to get hurt, right?

“At the end of the day, sure, what happened to George (Calombaris) is absolutely sad.

“But there’s 500 kids today, Eddie, who are unemployed, and by the way those kids have got wives, girlfriends, children, mortgages to pay, so there’s 1500 to 2000 people affected.”

Lucas also said that the issues around Calombaris’s chain collapsing were being used for political gain, and that if it continues it could come at a significant cost to the economy.

“I think it’s been politicised well beyond what’s reasonable, and I’m hoping — and I’m sure George and all his employees who are now unemployed, will see this as a watershed moment,” Lucas said.

“What has happened to George can not be extended beyond basically one restaurant.

“If we see this spread throughout our industry and spread throughout the economy, there is literally going to be tens of thousands of people unemployed, and no one wants that.”